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50 Signs That The U.S. Health Care System Is A Gigantic Money Making Scam

By Michael Snyder, on February 24th, 2013

The U.S. health care system is a giant money making scam that is designed to drain as much money as possible out of all of us before we die. In the United States today, the health care industry is completely dominated by government bureaucrats, health insurance companies and pharmaceutical corporations. The pharmaceutical corporations spend billions of dollars to convince all of us to become dependent on their legal drugs, the health insurance companies make billions of dollars by providing as little health care as possible, and they both spend millions of dollars to make sure that our politicians in Washington D.C. keep the gravy train rolling. Meanwhile, large numbers of doctors are going broke and patients are not getting the care that they need. At this point, our health care system is a complete and total disaster. Health care costs continue to go up rapidly, the level of care that we are receiving continues to go down, and every move that our politicians make just seems to make all of our health care problems even worse. In America today, a single trip to the emergency room can easily cost you $100,000, and if you happen to get cancer you could end up with medical bills in excess of a million dollars. Even if you do have health insurance, there are usually limits on your coverage, and the truth is that just a single major illness is often enough to push most American families into bankruptcy. At the same time, hospital administrators, pharmaceutical corporations and health insurance company executives are absolutely swimming in huge mountains of cash. Unfortunately, this gigantic money making scam has become so large that it threatens to collapse both the U.S. health care system and the entire U.S. economy.

The following are 50 signs that the U.S. health care system is a massive money making scam that is about to collapse…

#1 Medical bills have become so ridiculously large that virtually nobody can afford them. Just check out the following short excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article. One man in California that had been diagnosed with cancer ran up nearly a million dollars in hospital bills before he died…

By the time Steven D. died at his home in Northern California the following November, he had lived for an additional 11 months. And Alice had collected bills totaling $902,452. The family’s first bill — for $348,000 — which arrived when Steven got home from the Seton Medical Center in Daly City, Calif., was full of all the usual chargemaster profit grabs: $18 each for 88 diabetes-test strips that Amazon sells in boxes of 50 for $27.85; $24 each for 19 niacin pills that are sold in drugstores for about a nickel apiece. There were also four boxes of sterile gauze pads for $77 each. None of that was considered part of what was provided in return for Seton’s facility charge for the intensive-care unit for two days at $13,225 a day, 12 days in the critical unit at $7,315 a day and one day in a standard room (all of which totaled $120,116 over 15 days). There was also $20,886 for CT scans and $24,251 for lab work.

#10 According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. is currently experiencing a shortage of at least 13,000 doctors. Unfortunately, that shortage is expected to grow to 130,000 doctors over the next 10 years.

Whether you’re employed and insured, elderly and on Medicare, or poor and covered by Medicaid, the Florida Medical Association says there’s a growing shortage of doctors — especially specialists — available to provide you with medical care.

And if the Florida Legislature goes along with Gov. Rick Scott’s recommendation to offer Medicaid coverage to an additional 1 million Floridians — part of the Affordable Care Act that takes effect next January — the FMA says that shortage will only get worse.

#12 At this point, approximately 40 percent of all doctors in the United States are 55 years of age or older.

In December, when the New York Times ran a story about how a deficit deal might threaten hospital payments, Steven Safyer, chief executive of Montefiore Medical Center, a large nonprofit hospital system in the Bronx, complained, “There is no such thing as a cut to a provider that isn’t a cut to a beneficiary … This is not crying wolf.”

Actually, Safyer seems to be crying wolf to the tune of about $196.8 million, according to the hospital’s latest publicly available tax return. That was his hospital’s operating profit, according to its 2010 return. With $2.586 billion in revenue — of which 99.4% came from patient bills and 0.6% from fundraising events and other charitable contributions — Safyer’s business is more than six times as large as that of the Bronx’s most famous enterprise, the New York Yankees. Surely, without cutting services to beneficiaries, Safyer could cut what have to be some of the Bronx’s better non-Yankee salaries: his own, which was $4,065,000, or those of his chief financial officer ($3,243,000), his executive vice president ($2,220,000) or the head of his dental department ($1,798,000).

#14 Health insurance administration expenses account for 8 percent of all health care costs in the United States each year. In Finland, health insurance administration expenses account for just 2 percent of all health care costs each year.

#16 All over America, people are reporting huge health insurance premium increases thanks to Obamacare. The following example is from a recent article by Robert Wenzel…

A California small businessman tells me that he switched healthcare insurance carriers in 2012. The monthly premium for him and his wife was about $400, but when he received his first bill in January of this year it was for $1,200. He hasn’t been to a doctor in years, his wife has only gone for minor care.

Apparently there is some clause in the Affordable Healthcare Act that results in health insurance firms using a new method to calculate premiums. Those who have health insurance plans that have been in effect since at least 2010 are grandfathered under the old calculation method, but insurance carriers are using a new formula for new plans.

#17 Blue Shield of California has announced that it wants to raise health insurance premiums by up to 20 percent this year in an effort to keep up with rising health costs.

#18 Aetna’s CEO says that health insurance premiums for many Americans will double when the major provisions of Obamacare go into effect in 2014.

#19 Close to 10 percent of all U.S. employers plan to drop health coverage completely when the major provisions of Obamacare go into effect in 2014.

#20 According to a survey conducted by the Doctor Patient Medical Association, 83 percent of all doctors in the United States have considered leaving the profession because of Obamacare.

#21 Approximately 16,000 new IRS agents will be hired to help oversee the implementation of Obamacare, and the Obama administration has given the IRS 500 million extra dollars “outside the normal appropriations process” to help the IRS with their new duties.

#25Nearly half of all Americans now use prescription drugs on a regular basis according to the CDC. Not only that, the CDC also says that approximately one-third of all Americans use two or more pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis, and more than ten percent of all Americans use five or more pharmaceutical drugs on a regular basis.

#26 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.

#27 In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.

#28 Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.

#32 The top executives at the five largest for-profit health insurance companies in the United States combined to bring in nearly $200 million in total compensation for 2009.

#33 The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation. The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the entire year.

#34 It turns out that the financial assistance that Barack Obama promised would be provided for those with “pre-existing conditions” under Obamacare is already being shut down because of a lack of funding…

Tens of thousands of Americans who cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical problems will be blocked from a program designed to help them because funding is running low.

Obama administration officials said Friday that the state-based “high-risk pools” set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on the state.

#40 The state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency rooms per million people.

#41 According to a doctor interviewed by Fox News, “a gunshot wound to the head, chest or abdomen” will cost $13,000 at his hospital the moment the victim comes in the door, and then there will be significant additional charges depending on how bad the wound is.

#43 One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of the medical bills that she has audited contain “gross overcharges“.

#44 It is not uncommon for insurance companies to get hospitals to knock their bills down by up to 95 percent, but if you are uninsured or you don’t know how the system works then you are out of luck.

#45 According to a study conducted by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.

#46 Today, there are more than 56 million Americans on Medicaid, and it is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#47 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#48 Today, there are more than 50 million Americans on Medicare, and that number is projected to grow to 73.2 million in 2025.

#49 When Medicare was first established by Congress, it was estimated that it would cost the federal government $12 billion a year by the time 1990 rolled around. Instead, it cost the federal government $110 billion in 1990, and it will cost the federal government close to $600 billion this year.

#50 Even if you do have health insurance, that is no guarantee that medical bills will not bankrupt you. Just check out what a recent Time Magazine article says happened to one unfortunate couple from Ohio that actually did have health insurance…

When Sean Recchi, a 42-year-old from Lancaster, Ohio, was told last March that he had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his wife Stephanie knew she had to get him to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Stephanie’s father had been treated there 10 years earlier, and she and her family credited the doctors and nurses at MD Anderson with extending his life by at least eight years.

Because Stephanie and her husband had recently started their own small technology business, they were unable to buy comprehensive health insurance. For $469 a month, or about 20% of their income, they had been able to get only a policy that covered just $2,000 per day of any hospital costs. “We don’t take that kind of discount insurance,” said the woman at MD Anderson when Stephanie called to make an appointment for Sean.

Stephanie was then told by a billing clerk that the estimated cost of Sean’s visit — just to be examined for six days so a treatment plan could be devised — would be $48,900, due in advance.

By the way, that hospital down in Houston made a profit of 531 million dollars in one recent year.

So what can be done about all of this?

Well, the truth is that the status quo is a complete and total disaster, and every “solution” being promoted by politicians from both major political parties would only make things worse.

In the end, the U.S. health care system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, but we all know that is not going to happen.

Instead, our politicians and the health care industry will just find additional ways to extract money from all of us, and the level of care that we all get will continue to decline.

If you don’t believe this, just check out what Paul Krugman of the New York Times had to say recently…

We’re going to need more revenue…Surely it will require some sort of middle class taxes as well.. We won’t be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes… on the middle class, maybe a value added tax…And we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care, doc pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits . So the snarky version…which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone.

Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a baby becomes ‘smaller and shrunken’.

In the end, my philosophy is just to avoid the U.S. health care system as much as possible. Most doctors are just trained to do two things – prescribe drugs and cut you open. In an emergency situation where you are about to die, those may be your best options, but otherwise I would just as soon avoid the gigantic money making scam that the U.S. health care industry has become.

Avoid contact with the existing health care system as far as possible. Yes, emergencies arise that require the help of physicians, but by and large one can learn to care for one’s own minor issues. Though it is flawed, the internet has been an information leveler for the masses and permits each person to be his or her own physician to a large degree. Take advantage of it! Educate yourself about your own body and learn to fuel and maintain it as you would an expensive auto or a pet poodle. One does not need a medical degree to:

1. avoid excessive use of tobacco or alcohol or, for that matter, caffeine;
2. avoid poisons like fluoride, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, and addictive drugs (legal or illicit);
3. avoid unnecessary and potentially lethal imaging studies (TSA’s radiation pornbooths, excessive mammography, repetitive CT scans – exposure to all significantly increases cancer risk);
4. avoid excessive cell phone use and exposure to other forms of EMR pollution where possible (the NSA is recording everything you say and text anyway);
5. avoid daily fast food use and abuse (remember: pink slime and silicone) ;
6. avoid untested GM foods (do you really want to become “Roundup Ready?”):
7. avoid most vaccinations and pharmaceutical agents promoted by the establishment;
8. avoid risky behaviors (and, we do not need a bunch of Nanny State bureaucrats to define and police these);
9. exercise moderately;
10. get plenty of sleep;
11. drink plenty of good quality water (buy a decent water filter to remove fluoride, chloride, and heavy metals);
12. wear protective gear at work and play where appropriate (helmets, eye-shields, knee and elbow pads, etc.):
13. seek out locally-grown, whole, organic foods and support your local food producers;
14. take appropriate nutritional supplements (multi-vitamins, Vitamin C, Vitamin D3);
15. switch off the TV and the mainstream media it represents;
16. educate yourself while you can;

And, lastly…

17. QUESTION AUTHORITY!

Doing these simple, common-sense things will add healthy years to a person’s life and help one avoid most medical encounters during his or her allotted time on earth.

So what do you think?

Do you believe that the U.S. health care system is a gigantic money making scam that is about to collapse?

My mom who recently passed away from the progression of Alzheimer’s, broke her hip and for a 1 week’s stay at the hospital which included a partial hip replacement cost close to $80K.

MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse

That is horrible Rodster.

Unfortunately, we are all just one accident away from those kinds of medical bills.

Michael

Rodster

Correction, it was a 5 day stay.

Roster

I can also attest to the fact that doctors want to prescribe whatever you’ll let them. I recently went to my primary care physician and hadn’t seen him in several years. He asked me what meds I was taking and when I said NONE you should have seen the surprised look on his face as everyone takes some sort of meds. He asked several times just to make sure.

He even asked me if I suffered from depression and had to say NO several times. So yeah I think the whole thing is a scam and they look for ways to dope you up.

peaceangel

I recently turned 61 and am perfectly healthy and on NO medications and some doctors have said to me that most ppl my age are on ten to twenty medications. I know my mom’s whole generation began taking downers in the late 60’s then turned to pain killers for their upset stomachs and anti-depressants when those became popular for the depression caused by the downers and the pain killers and the list goes on and on and on.

And for the past two decades teachers and principals and even policemen have told kids they had to be on anti-depressants to come back to school and before their brains were even developed they were on metal filled mind bending drugs and in the foster care program in the group homes all of them have been addicted to these drugs. Twenty years ago one of the first of these drugs Effexor was $40 per mo. and today it is $550 per month which is a huge problem for a kid when it is his turn to pay the bill. They will all be labeled crazy and future terrorists by obamacare and 100% of all the kid school shooters were either on or in withdrawal from an anti-depressant. All these kids and some from other countries were recently DETAILED in a report from Frontsight—-all of them. Under Obamacare all ppl on anti-depressants and dozens of other drugs will be disarmed and never allowed to buy another hand gun.

markthetruth

The thing i always notice is the professionals telling us to do,take or perform exercises to be healthy, look slim,grow hair, lose wrinkles, ext. Are Bald,Fat, Out of Shape, and Wrinkled .

Also they are confused:

Eggs are bad next month their good
Milk is bad next month it’s good
Fish Oil is the best, then it’s not Now it’s Krill

What does it matter all our Food is processed garbage ,generic alter fruit’s veggies, meats,fish.

The food chain is so bad they catch a fish here, put it on ice ,ship it over seas for processing and packaging , then ship back to us to eat .

“Weight Loss ” Diets the Biggest Scam of ALL !

ANNNNDDDD.

WHO THE HECK KNOWS WHATS IN OUR WATER.

the end…

Ralfine

In every profession you have different levels of qualification and opinion. And then you have the mass media who want to make money.

So just like reading news you need to find different sources and then start cross checking on facts and background, and create your own database of knowledge.

piccadillybabe

Dr. Robert Dotson offered some very sound advice. There is a reason they are mandating healthcare insurance because many want no part of it anymore. The only way they can keep the scam going is by mandating everyone buy into it.

MeMadMax

Negative.
Everyone will keep paying into it. You will end up paying twice for medical that you are not even using. Once for medicare from your paycheck, and once for your mandate insurance. And the scam will keep going till everyone can’t pay. Around the same time or a little before/after, the entire government/country may cease to operate.

Better Hold Fast!

markthetruth

Someone Actually Spoke Out “SUBCONSCIOUSLY”

Was The PM of Japan Who Said “Quote:”

Let elderly people ‘hurry up and die’

He later apologized, but you know that he realizes what is going on. And is weighing on the country and is unsustainable problem with the cost of healthcare.

the end…

charkee

Indeed, the return of Hitler’s “useless eaters”.

markthetruth

we are trying to defy nature in ALL ways and in the end we destroy nature that we were given, land,food,water, wildlife all out of greed(or what we call progress) we are progressing ourselves to a world of “Genetic Alter Human Race” called “Flesh Robots”

the end….

mar1950

When I was 8 yrs old (1958) I had hernia surgery and was in the hospital for a week. When we got the bill my dad (a tire recapper) wrote out a check for the whole amount. Not saying It was a small thing or that it didn’t set us back but we didn’t but we didn’t go into debt or spend the rest of our lives trying to pat it back. 5years ago I had a ruptured brain anyurism. The 200 mile helicopter ride to Minneapolis cost $17,000. Thankfully we had good insurance.

Me Generation

One of the problems is “insurance pays for it”!!!

mar1950

Agreed! Big insurance or the government. They can charge whatever they want. If we all had to pay out of the pocket they would have to get in line with what we could pay.

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

Yeah, it’s like employers think they are offering something good when they say, “We have health, dental, vision, etc.” It’s contributing to the problem, and nobody ever gets a raise anymore, and wages are too low to get by.

http://karmaeconomics.blogspot.com/ lavista4u

I’m from a third world country India and all these years, I was thinking how bad i had and now I’m counting my blessing to be born in India.

Seriously, with the above points. America sounds like a Fifth World Country. Even in a third world country like mine, we don’t have it so bad. I promise you that. here, The cost of medicine is dirt cheap with Hospitals run by charities and government, that at least fix you up to live to your avg. life expectancy of your country. I have never ever even bothered to think about Hospitals other then when i get sick that this could be an issue. I mean common, all this medical thing is a Noble Profession, where we are not suppose to cheat.

Its beyond comprehension for even a guy from Third world country and trust me, I’m not making it sound dramatic…US Healthcare is truly f***cked up.

PB

Not only that, its terrible care compared to other countries with socialized systems that the Americans have all been conditioned to think of as communism. I’ve seen it. Very inconsistent standards and extraordinary greed, coupled with a frayed and vanishing compassion. I wouldn’t want to get sick there. Illness is just an opportunity for greedy health services to rob you blind before they let you die.

programmer

Look at the happiest countries in the world – Sweden, Norway, Denmark. All Social democrats. They are enjoying a far better quality of life than Americans are thats for sure. I have always maintained that America’s problems aren’t limited to the government itself. Why do Americans gouge all this crap junk food ? It’s because they are beat down and depressed people. 50% of the families are broken. It looks good and seems to be held together for now but it will unwind when the collapse happens. Then you will see all the dormant depravity coming out in the open which has been several decades in the making.

mar1950

I don’t believe in any kind of socialized medicine but some of these other countries do have money for healthcare because they are not wasting $700 billion a year on trying to occupy the rest of the world.

LAWD

Perhaps you’ve been lied to then, or are misinformed. I’m self employed and pay ~$120/mnth for two adults. I have no deductibles, no co-pay, no bills. My mother was kicked by her horse in 2006, 8 flail ribs, contused heart, collpased lung, ruptured spleen. 10 days in hospital, emergency surgery, helicopter on stand-by, Bill, $0. Not a single Canadian has ever gone b/k over medical bills AND we do this for half the US cost (as a % of GDP). You might want to check some facts.

Masterlock2020

I agree wholeheartedly that we should bring all our troops home and save $700 billion/year. But that would do absolutely nothing to stop the price gouging that is taking place in the medical industry.

You should re-read several points made in this article pertaining to price gouging.

It’s not that socialized medicine is a better model, it’s that price gouging is not possible.

Greed is the issue with the American healthcare system. People go into medical for money, not because they care.

http://asouthernwriter.com/ Joyce J

I don’t agree with socialized medicine, but I believe we have this issue with healthcare in the first place is because of what we are putting and allowing into out bodies. I know places in Latin America that have socialized medicine, but those people are less sick because they don’t eat like, and how we do.

MeMadMax

Those are other, smaller countries… where their sheeple are better conditioned to accept the socialist than we are. We, on the other hand, are a country of 300 million die hard rebels… Eventually, socialism/communism/liberalism/progressivism/marxism/whatever it wants to call itself will split the country into pieces… There will be some that want it, some that want a middle ground, and some that hate it. Now thats 3 different views, now apply that to a population of 300 million… Now you have 100 million that want it, 100 mill that have a middle vies, and 100 mil that hate it. Now if that ain’t a bubbleing caldron, I don’t know what is…

LAWD

Hmmm. And all those smaller countries full of sheople get health care for 1/2 what you do. Market driven is great, and if Americans earned what Africans do, you could get that drug for $7 instead of $70. You people never look at the math. market driven means MARKET DRIVEN! The manufacturer wil charge what the market will bear. When the industry is for-profit. medicine should not be. Imo.

MeMadMax

I’m assuming that you are advocating socialism? But you are posting the crown jewels of what makes a free enterprise market work? Or are you just trying to mock the US while assuming that your system is working because it’s a free market? Because “market driven” is what makes a “free market” work. But as soon as government becomes the driver of the “market driven” instead of people, then it is a socialist economy not a free market enterprise economy…

For all intents and purposes we are really a third world country, its just our military might and the fact that we are the biggest consumers that has kept us afloat. This country is one of the saddest places on earth.

http://asouthernwriter.com/ Joyce J

I agree. I lived in Mexico for a while, and I didn’t have to go to a hospital at all. I rarely got sick (and when I did – the doctor came to ME). Meds were cheap (at most pharmacies you could get meds without a prescription), and you can get a lot of natural remedies and vitamins down there as well. As a matter of fact, I had a stomach bug – and the doctor gave me an herbal supplement. America’s healthcare system USE to be this way (without a lot of government/Big corp. interference). Not so much anymore…

peaceangel

Sooooo true but nowhere nearly as f—-d up as it will be under obamacare. And if we get one more economic downgrade we will be listed as a third world country. If we were not paying 100 million per hour on our national debt and giving the country away to China to pay our interest to them we would already have that downgrade.

Mondobeyondo

The American healthcare system isn’t set up to make sick people get better. It’s set up to make sick people sicker, not to mention bankrupt from medical bills.. Yes, it’s a scam. It’s all about profits for the hospitals, big pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, their friends and lobbyists. It’s not the fault of the doctors. The docs aren’t getting rich. They have $200,000 university medical bills to pay off.

We have the best health care system in the world – if you can afford it. 90 percent of Americans can’t afford it. That’s being conservative in my view. I’d say 95 percent can’t afford it.

Hambone

I’m with you, except on one point. I think the doctors are getting rich. I have close relatives that are physicians and another that was formerly a pharmaceutical rep. The whole system is totally rigged and evil. The drug reps get in the back pocket of the doctors early, before they’re making the big bucks. They line their pockets with cash — literally. I had a brother in law that, on more than one occasion, slipped him an envelope of cash for “listening to his pitch.” As the docs get more established, the prizes get better — trips to Hawaii, etc. Again, I have seen this directly with family members.

And first hand, with a son who suffered for almost a decade, I’ve seen how the medical industry does not profit from curing you. It profits from treating you. They are quite happy to keep you just sick enough to keep needing treatment. A little over a year ago, their treatments made him so sick he needed a $1,400 antibiotic to make him better.

There are exceptions, great doctors, but for the most part our health care system is selfish, broken and evil. I’d add “incompetent,” but I think they know what they are doing. If a few of us have to suffer along the way, so be it.

Rodster

Most doctors are NOT rich and a good percent of GP are in debt for school debt. The few who are rich are usually in cosmetic surgery (boobs, nose, face lifts etc.) and the others you’ll find in other life threatening specialized fields. And don’t forget those few rich doctors employ a staff and pay insurance.

That’s something people forget that the practice of medicine to day is defensive so as not to get sued. That adds a lot to the cost of treatment.

Synick46

Strangely enough, cosmetic surgery is NOT covered by insurance, therefore it is the most reasonably priced care available. Without insurance company interference, these doctors are doing very well, all from patients who freely seek their services. They actually represent what the medical industry should be. Seems upside down, doesn’t it?

Flossie

Outstanding observation! The free market works.

http://www.facebook.com/RipLong Francis Elliott Long

Absolutely True.

peaceangel

Most surgeons make tens of millions of dollars per year. I have some of those in my family but they are all old school. The baby boomers forgot to save for their kids college education so now everyone is helping to pay off the new doctors college loans.

James Stevens

Tens of millions? Seriously? No. They don’t.

ab77

That’s one of the most ludicrous statements I’ve ever heard. Most general surgeons barely make as much as hospitalists, despite general surgery requiring an additional two years of training. For the love of god, educate yourself before spouting such absurd nonsense.

leithel1

Do you know how to count? Maybe your name should be smoke the peace pipe. To make that statement you have got to be smoking something stronger than tobacco.

El Pollo de Oro

Mondobeyondo: You said it perfectly. The BRA has excellent health care if you can afford it, but most can’t. Even if you make six figures in the BRA, you’re one illness away from bankruptcy and homelessness. We have excellent doctors or nurses in this country, but it’s a question of access. To me, the real villains aren’t the doctors and nurses, but companies like Blue Cross and Aetna and the politicians (both Democraps and Republi-Cons) who are in bed with them. And the Unaffordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare/Romneycare/HeritageFoundationcare/Pelosicare) doesn’t do nearly enough to make the health insurance companies clean up their act.

We have the best health care system, true enough, but we are the sickest nation on earth and number one for every physical or mental disease or disorder known to man.

Mondobeyondo

What a paradox, huh? The best health care on earth, and yet we’re the sickest nation on earth. Perhaps we should look at some southern African country – worth health care on earth, but the healthiest people…?!

Aeffesstoo

horsecrap and … more horsecrap

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

You betcha. I had a to-the-bone shin gash. Had I followed the doctors advice, I’d have gotten an infection. I don’t kill all the bacteria in my body trying to protect against a few out of place ones in a gash. That would overwhelm immune system capacity to clean up the mess that would create. It would also cause bowel problems for months or years. They had no recommendation for probiotics, either, not that this would replace all the species wiped out.

eaglewindspirit .

Try a million dollar collage to pay off! My ophthalmologist paid $980,000 for his US medical degree 8 years back.

RICHARD

With about 10,000 people a day going on SSI. Just how long do you think it will take to break this country, which i remind you is already broke??

michelle

get yourself well and keep yourself well, the medical system is going down the toilet!!

Ralfine

Keeping yourself well is just another prepping issue. How can you run away from an attack, if you weigh two tons? How much to you need to store, if you need half a truck of food every day?

For giving birth, better stay in a 4* hotel and get a room for the midwife too. Much cheaper.

Hambone

I can’t lie, you wear me out the majority of the time…

That said, I notionally agree with you on this one. My last child was born with a midwife, at a birthing center. They are wonderful. It was night and day, compared to a hospital. The wife and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

And, we were home that same day with the baby. We had to pay out of pocket (no insurance coverage), but it was worth it.

Ralfine

I heard Cuba has good doctors. For a good holiday you could fly to Thailand every two years and have a complete checkup. Head to toe manual and visual examination, blood, urine, stool tests. And Thai people are very friendly.

Plenty of people go to Thailand and get quality medial and surgical care for a fraction of the price charged by greedy, grasping incompetents in places like the US.

Rodster

Yeah i’m sure it’s worked out really well for Chavez after you peel away all the BS propaganda. I’ll take US healthcare over Cuba’s any day.

MeMadMax

It seems like with the passing of obamacare, it has thrown the big medical companies into a feeding frenzy and thrown the small ones out into the cold. A couple of weeks ago there was a small twenty story-ish hospital that was down the block from me. I thought the place was pretty busy at least from the outside with people going in and out like any other hospital. Then one day, literally overnight, the place was closed and the wrecking crew was already there disconnecting things and pulling the glass out of the doors and windows… I noticed this has been going on alot lately, here today, gone tomorrow. There was a small clinic that I took the girls to a few months ago that I noticed was gone too. I don’t know how long it was gone because it’s farther down the road from us but It seemed like a busy place too. Anyways, around here it’s like the homeless, dead businesses, bad roads, etc etc: you notice a small, subtle increase, or decrease in this case…. slowly, but surely, getting worse and worse.

Robert (qslv)

Exactly. Downtown hospitals in big cities have been closing as quickly as their boards can find a suburban place to re-locate to. Trenton and Princeton are the two I’ve witnessed first hand. These urban hospitals become hubs of illegal immigrant communities in all the major cities in the U.S. As the hospitals become clogged with non-paying patients, a crisis ensues. Those hospitals which don’t or can’t relocate for whatever reason go bankrupt and close.

peaceangel

In 2008 110,000 hospitals in Texas alone closed because none of their patients had insurance.

http://www.crossworksme.com/ GiantM

There’s only one way to clean up “ALL” the corruption in this nation. And “HIS” hand is about to come down.

I can’t perceive how much longer a nation that was founded on scriptural principles can maintain itself by living an immoral lifestyle which totally contradicts what was blessed by G_D!

Greed is contrary to humility!

Sister Flossie

He sure is taking His G_damn time.

http://www.crossworksme.com/ GiantM

Well Flossie may He forgive you for blatantly using His name in vain.

You want His hand upon you?….you may very well experience it shortly.

Jagrick

I am waiting. Guess what? Your great grandfather and to the ends of time are waiting. Go find BigFoot, you got a better shot.

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

Watch the video, “The High Tech Cell”, if you think life evolved, you are so wrong. One of the most powerful evidences for God, is the immense level of programming in the genomes of living things. The fulness of it is beyond human comprehension, really. The video by Werner Gitt, “In the Beginning Was Information”, points out proof of God.

grandpa

with so many good Dr’s walking away like many of us who refuse to be connected to poor work, maybe they should get together and create a credit union/ dr office . theres another way to take over the post office too
If people want jobs they need to take em .

chilller

My mother an army nurse during WWII. As such, she was dedicated to her profession and the guberment. By the time she died in 1993, she was on so many medications, when I called the ambulance for the last for her, the EMT asked if she was on any medications. I showed him her “bag” and he said, “Everything”. One drug creates a side effect which requires the need for another…then another and another until you’re chained to an endless barrage of one new drug after another. Big pharma with their accomplice Big Guberment have been systematically sucking our loved ones dry during their last years to remove them from mother earth and pocket their retirements. They only wish to keep you around long enough to stay alive to line their pockets. Compare our health care system to others around the world and we have no advantages over most. At 60, I refuse to comply with these charlatans and am more healthy today than both my parents ever were.

Case in point: I went in for a physical and a doctor said I had a history of high blood pressure. When I asked him how he figured that, he said, “You’re BP was elevated once during a physical 3 years ago”. Was is elevated that day I was in?…no. I told him 1 occurrence does not a history make and left. Another doctor said I needed to start cholesterol meds as they were elevated. He said the meds would lower my high C 10% a year. I used my own therapy to lower it 50% in 6 months and when I went back to see what they had to say about my remarkable transformation they said, “That’s nice but you’re still at risk and have to take the meds!! No questions about how I had done such a remarkable feat, the only thing on their minds was “SALES”. All of our doctors are trained in institutions are heavily subsidized by Big Pharma and because of their generosity, they get to make up their ciriculam of medicate, cut and medicate some more. Our “doctors” are for the most part drug salesmen and women with the exception of the alternative science ones.

julia_disqus

I have my own blood pressure device (good to have at home, even for healthy people). If I need a test, I order it on the internet (privatemdlabs), as twice as cheap, with full explanation in writing and no any “live agent” treating my ears over the phone. I use Chinese medicine to prevent and treat minor problems (since the prevention part is big in TCM, they are minor). So, why would I need to go to any of those “physicians” and “offices”, what for? For stress, which is bad for health?

The “charlatan” name comes from those people who were advertising and selling medicines in old European cities, as oppose to traditional folk medicine. Were forgot what this industry comes from…

Mark McNamara

Im from England and the health care system we have here the NHS (National Health Service) although not perfect does an excellent job. My partner was in the Sunderland Royal Hospital ITU (Intensive Care Unit) in December 2012 and the level of care that she received was outstanding from start to finish. There is never the fear of medical bills as its all paid for by the state. Like I said the system is not perfect but it is a national institution that does its utmost best to take care of its citizens. The only time anyone has to pay is when they get a prescription for medication and the person is in full time employment and the cost of each prescription is £7.65 which is approx $11.58 and it makes no difference if the prescription is for 1 tablet or 100 or 1000 upwards it is still the same price.

El Pollo de Oro

Mark McNamara: I know some American expats who have moved to the UK permanently (as well as plenty of American expats living in countries in Continental Europe), and they have used the NHS extensively. Based on their own personal experiences, most of them have a generally favorable view of the NHS and have told me they’ll take the NHS in a heartbeat over the abominable health insurance system we have in The Banana Republic of America.

Here in the BRA, the conversation we should have been having in 2009 and 2010 was how the NHS compares to health care systems in Italy, Germany and other countries in Continental Europe. We should have taken a close look at how health care is administered in all those countries and tried to determine what would work best for us (single payer, public/private like you have in France, totally privatized but carefully regulated like you have in some parts of Europe). But no, our politicians were too busy whoring for the insurance companies and their lobbyists on Capitol Hill. So Americans will continue to die and suffer needlessly in order to feed corporate profits.

Mark McNamara

El Pollo De Oro yes you are correct that in America its the corporate profits which come first and thankfully that is not the case here what with the NHS being a government institution. If you ever watched the Michael Moore documentary Sicko, Michael came over to England and interviewed doctors and other health professionals and he seeemed quite impressed with what he saw. I honestly wish for all Americans to have a healthcare system that is fair and affordable for all but your politicians do have to stop whoring which it seems is not going to stop anytime soon.
Having said that, our politicians over here are just as greedy and are pushing austerity measures upon all of us while they enrich themselves to the detriment of everyone else.
I truly despair at the road America is heading down and also feel that my country is heading in the same direction sometimes. What puzzles me at times is how much money is ever going to be enough for these greedy corporations.

El Pollo de Oro

Mark McNamara: One of the best parts of Sicko was where Michael Moore actually talked to people who used the European health care systems on a regular basis. I once visited a major hospital in Paris (the one right around the corner from Notre Damme Cathedral). A friend/business associate who had spent many years in the BRA but returned to Paris was being released after one of several operations he needed, and he was so glad to have access to France’s public/private system rather than the horror he’d left behind in the BRA (where that guy would either be broke or dead by now).

That said, bankster austerity measures being implemented in parts of Europe could have deadly consequences. People in Greece are dying unnecessarily from lack of health care in order to bail out the banksters.

K

We have a shallow, self-centered, greedy Country. Therefore, we have a shallow self-centered, greedy health care system. Add to that, the belief we need a pill for everything. I have not been to a Dr. in a decade, my water comes from a well, and my food is local to the degree possible. Remember one thing. In this Country, the do not want to cure anything. They want to treat everything, so you are on the hook forever.

K

The should be they, after Country.

Hambone

I just echoed your comment in another reply… there is no profit in curing. There is big bucks in treating.

mar1950

Being cured would entail much responsibility on the patient. Like knowledge, lifestyle and dietary changes. We don’t want that. We are ignorant sheep. We want the establishment to take care of us and someone else to pay for it.

cannuck21

Absolutely correct. It seems that the US is similar to Rome in its final days. But what power can replace the US? China, Russia the EU? Not a chance. Looks like a decent into chaos. Very sad. Very concerning.

K

I agree, about going the way of Rome. But I think the chaos would be short lived. Russia would expand back into a few of the old client states, but not most of them. China would take Taiwan, and what used to be called indo-china. Nato would stand pat, whether the EU survives or not. Leaving 3 spheres of influence. With mostly just the Middle-east, as a remaining area of contention. In the long run, it could become a more stable world.

godozo

And the Americas? Would they fall into a peace from the removal of the United States, or would the Narco-Lords institute a violent rule by themselves?

Tim

I have a story about health care costs. My father was exposed to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Later in life he developed diabetes and then leukemia. He suffered greatly for many years before he died in 2011. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provided his medical care. My grandmother (my father’s mother) said my father showed her a statement from the VA that listed all the services my father had received and the cost of those services. She said the total was close to $1 million.

markthetruth

SANITIZERS invasion !!!!!!!!!!! (Goodbye Immune system)

America the “GERMAPHOBICS” sanitizers everywhere if you touch something you must sanitize !.

the end…

Hambone

No kidding… this over-sterilized world we live in is not helping matters.

Mind you, I don’t go around licking doorknobs or grocery carts, but the hand sanitizers and Clorox wipes have gotten out of hand. I refuse to use either.

Flossie

Hasn’t triclosan been banned in Europe and Israel? Along with soy-based baby formula. That’s a whole ‘nother kettle of genetically-modified fish.

jaxon

lots of things our evil FDA allows the giant corps to put in our food even though Europe, Japan and even China disallow them.

Aspartame–a proven cancer causing agent….

Bromine in Mountain Dew, Gatorade and other drinks is proven to cause neuro damage, skin lesions, is linked to dementia etc===but Bromine’s primary usage of course is as a flame retardent for mattresses, fabrics etc.

Of course when you have the money of Pepsi Inc or Merisant ( who produce Equal and NutraSweet- a subsidiary of Monsanto)…then the FDA kind of turns its head away from all of that silly scientific evidence of repeatable testing which proves their products are carcinogens–heck, it was only “lab animals” growing those tumors, there’s no proof that the same happens to humans when they use these poisons……

K

I mostly agree with you. However I would make an exception. If I was living in an area with an outbreak of drug resistant TB. So far have only heard of it in L.A., and Miami. At least nowhere near me, so far.

jaded

TB will be something that will speed up the collapse and decay. Scary stuff.

jaxon

100 years ago exactly, in 1913, the 2 top causes of death in the USA were TB and diarrhea ( from dysentary)—just an interesting fact.

mytruejoy

As an alternative healer (and a very experienced and good one!), I am always amazed at how the amount of documentation, billing coding, diagnostic coding, and paperwork / digitalwork just increases every year. This reduces the amount of patients i can treat and decreases the amount of time I can spend per patient. With Doctors that are more business oriented than people oriented, this has to eventually lead to almost no time with the patient and almost all the time on paperwork. So the end result of “Improved and affordable care” mandates will be no patient care and unaffordable costs. This will lead to cash (no insurance) practices where patients can receive very high quality care at very low out of pocket costs. This will lead insurance companies, Ineffective clinics and hospitals, and government to mandate that high quality cash only health care be prohibited. Don’t believe me?? Just watch!!!

Hambone

Mainstream doctors try to make patients feel like morons for asking about alternative treatment. I think it threatens their livelihood.

And try talking to one of them about diet… they’ll look at you like you’re from outer space. Diet? Do you have an MD? I don’t think so. Take this pill and go back to eating Pop Tarts and Dr. Pepper.

FounderChurch Church

Google “FounderChurch” (as one word with quotes) You will get 7000 hits of FounderChurch Teachings.

Health professionals (i.e Drs, Administrators) believe it’s their right to have a beach house on all four corners of the country. Add scum bag lawyers to the mix, evil insurance companies and no wonder the system is where it is. I’m a capitalist, conservative but I must admit are health system is truly messed up.

matchy500

Sorry, doctors are guilty too. I work with surgeons who ‘assist’ their colleagues in order to get more reimbursement while the assistant watches TV. Bad doctors get paid the same as good doctors -hardly the behaviour of the free market

owswitch

Power & Profit take Precedence over People.

justamatteroftime

Where are the jobs to support the financial vacuum cleaners held in place by the laws-when the money is printed by the Fed it doesnt get into the hands of the people-the machine is short circuited doomed to burn out.
Lower your blood pressure, stay calm -they really are only destroying themselves.

http://www.facebook.com/joe.kleinkamp Joe Kleinkamp

All the more reason to take care of your health. Anyone reading this just got a reminder to eat better, exercise and drink plenty of water. You can’t prevent every illness but at least you’ll feel better while preventing the ones you can. Now go eat your oatmeal.

maby123

lucky am healthy never been in a emergency room, eat healthy as possible and meditation to keep calm, do not pay for super expensive insurance wich soack the blood from the people, and do not eat out because restaurant use burn oil to cook their expensive unhealthy meals, fruit, vegetables, and once in a moon red meet, this one is the worse.

asdfa

Mike, this is one of your best posts. In fact, I can’t remember one that is better. All of your 50 facts are zingers. None of them are anecdotal. All are just total ridiculous facts.

Inflation is exemplified in health care. All issues of the economic ponzi scheme are. Well done sir.

MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse

Thank you.

Michael

mar1950

When the system goes down along with societal collapse, those fortunate to survive will be much healthier without the med. establishment. Get healthy and physically fit to greatly increase you changes.

mar1950

I had an aunt who was on a dozen or so meds until she switched Drs. Her new doc threw them all away and within a few days she felt 100% betters. I’m not saying she had perfect health the rest of her days but she lived to 93.

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Webb/100001371414176 David Webb

I agree with you 100%.
There was a nurse’s strike in a California Hospital.
The fatality rate went down 20%. Little bit suspicious.
When I think of doctors, I often think of the television portrayal of Mash. Frank Burns is alive and well and practicing his kind of medicine.
There are a lot of “Frank Burns” out there.
I don’t think it will change with ObamaCare or any other social medicine plan.
Look real close. The Medical Establishment has plans. Big plans for you and me as Cash Cows.
What I do have is faith in human greed. We have more people scamming more people than anyone else in the world! Sooner or later the scammers conflict. That is when the entire house of cards will come down.
There was a time in this country when honest work was rewarded with honest pay. When people bought houses and paid them off in 5 years.
When taxes were low.

What use is it to save money? Between inflation and traps like the health profession, and the plans of government to milk us all harder, I think saving money is probably a useless thing to do.
Apparently an entire generation of people now on food stamps, welfare, unemployment, living without benefit of matrimoney, 3 and 4 illegitimate kids, agree with me.
Those kids are often on Medicaid. To work is to get your benefits taken away from you. The system works like this: 60 days on Medicare in a nursing home while recovering. You are allowed 2,000 in the bank. You are allowed money for burial purposes. After 60 days you are taken over by Medicaid.
So given a lifetime of savings, you are going to loose $100,000, have your home sold out from under you, and you are allowed a set maximum on how much car you can own. So why work and save money?
The medical profession is a means to an end. The end is to destroy all of us financially.

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

“The end is to destroy us all financially”. I think you pegged it.

Dave of OK

When are we going to realize this health care system is not sustainable? The reason no one balks is because humans are afraid of the alternate. So they will go to any extreme in order not have to face the alternative. Obamacare is just spreading around the cost, it is not addressing the costs. Healthcare is going to bankrupt our personal lives and the nation.

El Pollo de Oro

Dave of OK: The health care system in The Banana Republic of America is definitely unsustainable. And the Unaffordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare, Romneycare, HeritageFoundationcare or Pelosicare) doesn’t address the costs. It keeps the wolves (Blue Cross, Aetna, United Healthcare, etc.) guarding the henhouse, and it is nothing more than a giant corporate bailout for those wolves.

charkee

The average cancer patient pays me about $500 total and the medical industrial complex charges orders of magnitude above that and really does not help that much, about that of placebo. And they call me the quack.

It is a gigantic scam but is no more likely to collapse than our government, which also is a gigantic scam.

peaceangel

Michael,

This is a great compilation of facts and I know from selling health insurance that these figures are very difficult to find. Great job. I only have a couple of things to add.

I worked for a decade selling health insurance to self-employed people which is why I KNOW they cannot comply with obamacare and cover all their employees and their employees families as legislated by obamacare. In the 90’s only one in ten self-employed people could afford health insurance for their own families. The reason I know this is because they all KNEW that if a family member had a big hospital bill that the hospital would take their homes, cars and businesses to pay for it. They all wanted it but most could not afford it, even a hospital bare bones policy and now the economy is ten times worse than it was then.

Aside from the huge profits that hospital operators are making everyone pays extra for every band-aid and everything else because of the terminally unemployed and career criminals who own nothing in their lives to take to pay the bills. Also our surgeons also make tens of millions of dollars a year as well and I always wonder if you work a 60 hour week will you really have time to spend all this money. In Canada a surgeon is not allowed to earn more than $500,000 per year and this is where we are headed with a shortage of doctors and I don’t agree with these much of a reduction in salary either.

Every single nite in America our ER’s fill up with gun shot wounds, stabbings and other domestic violence incidents that go on 365 days a year in tens of thousands of neighborhoods nationwide. And if you check it you will find that the hospital makes no effort to get these moochers to pay a dime but will hound a person with assets day and nite for payment.

Also I have read all the “stuff” that insurance companies ALL must cover in the super bare bones plan of obamacare and it is ludicrous what has to be included and anyone who has sold health insurance can clearly see this will double premiums. Clearly. And it already is doing that and they will keep going sky high and there will be no end in sight.

Finally, America is number one for every single physical or mental disease or disorder known to man by leaps and bounds over the other industrialized nation on earth.

peaceangel

I was blown away when I asked a few doctors in my family in the 70’s if they took ANY classes in nutrition. They did not and do not today.

chilller

Pretty sad considering that is exactly what veterinarians use in the treatment of animals.

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

I totally pissed off an emergency room doctor once, asking her if she had any classes in nutrition. Before this, I had asked her if there were any tests for nutritional status, as the family member brought there was suffering from severe depression. She personally attacked me, which I took to mean she had no substance to her arguments.

OneDay

I am not completely sure that is true although I could be wrong. I was pre-PA (Physician’s Assistant) for a while and part of the curriculum was a nutrition class.

Mike

It is a big money making scam but I do not believe it is going to collapse anytime soon. It has way too much money to collapse.

RogerV

The U.S. health care system is not a scam that is about to collapse; the American people are collapsing from lack of paying attention.

2Gary2

Single payer is the only way

MetaCynic

What do you think is the cause of Europe’s staggering sovereign debt load and coming financial collapse? It’s not military spending, or obscene CEO compensation, or weak unions. It’s unsustainable welfare spending. The foolish experiment of everyone trying to live at someone else’s expense is coming to a tragic end.

How stupid have people become to believe that giving a big chunk of your paycheck every month to government and receiving a portion back in the form of services micromanaged by bureaucrats after the subtraction of astronomic administrative expenses is a winning policy?

tacoma

But, but I don’t understand. For 50 years, they told me health care in America is the very best in the world. The most high tech, the most advanced, the most effective. Because American medical technology far exceeds that of any other country, and because it is a private free enterprise system which of course is the absolute very best in the whole world!!!!

The best, the greatest, unparallelled, shining example of American ingenuity and capitalism.

While the stupid, socialized health care systems of the rest of the world is doomed to financial and moral bankruptcy. They are systems of misery, and indeed a danger to human society. They are backward, a bureaucratic nightmare, and deliver nothing of benefit. They are the worse example of socialism!!!

Yup, that’s what I and every American has been told.

2Gary2

In the 2011-12 budget year, offshore tax havens saved wealthy
individuals in California $2.94 billion off their state tax bills, notes analyst David Cay Johnston, enough to make the University of California tuition-free for all UC students and their families.

Tax these GD MF and spread the wealth.

Mondobeyondo

Doctor: “See that green line on the EKG monitor you’re hooked up to?”
Patient: “Yes, it goes up and down every second or so, and the machine goes beep, beep. beep…”
Doctor: “Each time you see that line go up and down, you owe the hospital another $100.”
Patient: “That’s not fair! Do you suppose if that line were flat, I would owe nothing?”
Doctor: “Yes, that’s true. But that would mean you’re dead.”

david39910

The Time Mag article and interview with the reporter on The Daily Show describe the hospital industry like I have never heard before … and the fact is it is very easy to understand when it is explained the way he did

Mike Hughes

I could not agree more. I am healthy at nearly 73 because I arrived at much the same conclusions years ago and took appropriate measures like those recommended here. Keep up the good work!

hillbillyhustle

After I was diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago. I realized quick that financial ruin was ahead. I was fortunate enough to qualify for medicaid. I was told I needed chemo and radiation for a low stage tumor. Well, After 1 treatment of chemo…I told my doctor that I wasn’t his cash cow and wasn’t gonna take anymore chemo treatments. He looked at me as if I was crazy. I then told him that it is known that chemo does not cure cancerous tumors. It only cures blood cancers. The treatment itself was unbearable and I do not understand how it is “protocol” to prescribe chemo as “precaution”? If cancer gets in your lymph nodes, chemo will not stop the spread. Once Again, He looked baffled by my words, Long story short, I chose radiation and it worked. Even though, I was on medicaid, I declined the $300,000 worth of chemo that would have been free to me.

A poor nurse

One problem also with the system is that Hospitals are buying out all the physicians in communities. It is almost impossible to find a private clinic any more. When these physician’s join the hospital system the bill goes up (doubles) because the hospitals can charge facility fees for even a simple visit to the doctor (for a sore throat). So you come away with a bill twice as large. Most people do not understand this and are amazed at the cost of healthcare because of these billing practices. The hospital system has special billing rules that private physician practices cannot do.
I agree that the system is broke and unfixable due to the money paid to the elect. Obamacare will drive insurance premium cost through the roof for all but it also will put the poor further into the poor house. Since Obamacare requires that all individuals purchase healthcare insurance (and the government will pay your premium up front but then will take it out of any tax refund you might have received. Or you will owe them money if you do not have enough coming back in taxes.) read the article Obamacare: a deception by Paul Craig Roberts. He reports on a small section of Obamacare but what he shares only proves that this entire bill is to extract more money from the pockets of Americans and put it into the healthcare machine. We the American public will no longer have a say on the level of healthcare we cover nor if we want to be covered. We are now going to have to take orders from a panel that will decide what you can and cannot afford.
I am ashamed to say that I have worked as a nurse and in administration for over 25 years. And the whole thing is making me sick, knowing I have no way to stop it. All I have to say is ask lots of questions about what the care is going to cost you before you get the care done if at all possible. Then seek out other possible clinic (especially physicians not employed by a hospital system). You might get the same service for half the price or less. Does not hurt to ask.

efinlays

I am an internal medicine physician and I can say most of this is spot on. As one commenter earlier put it our healthcare system is interested in treating you, not curing you. By far the majority of physicians I know are honorable, caring, good people but unfortunately the tools at our disposal are not under our control for the most part. We are at the mercy of what hospitals provide, what pharmaceutical industries produce, what insurance agencies will pay for and what the FDA will approve. And if you choose to use alternative, less toxic, cheaper alternatives such as vitamins or herbs you expose yourself to professional critcism or even lawsuit for using “unapproved” or “non evidenced based” medicine. I can assure you from an insider, the system is completely broken and I am confident this bubble will burst soon. And to settle the issue as to if doctors are rich. Those that practiced in the 1960s and 70s mostly are. They got payed very well back then. As for all the doctors I know who graduated in the 1990s or later, only tne neurosurgeons and plastic surgeons are rich, and believe me you don’t want the neurosurgeon’s job. I as an internal medicine physician have been working for 4 years. I still drive a 1995 toyota corolla, I live in a 1800 square foot house on a 2000 square foot lot, I buy my clothes at old navy sales racks or Ross and I still live paycheck to paycheck. No joke. And I have well over 100,000 dollars in student loan debt that I can’t even afford to begin paying off

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

I used to have a home building related business. I felt bad for customers who were doctors. Many tried to hide that they were doctors, because so many businesses try to rip them off. It was enjoyable to talk with them because they were so intelligent and well spoken.

Roger Smith

There was a WSJ article about a month ago that stated a statistic that really struck me: MORE AMERICANS DIE FROM OVERDOSING ON PRESCRIPTION PAIN MEDICATION THAT ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS COMBINED…….If that is true, just think about how insane that is. Of all the cocaine, heroin, meth, PCP, bath salts…or whatever that’s floating around out there, The grim reaper is actually waiting for you at the CVS drive-thru…..

http://www.facebook.com/IntergalacticUnicorn Jennifer Iglu

Last year, pharmaceutical companies paid me to cater free lunches to clinics for their sales pitches. That was hundreds of dollars at a time spent on swag for doctors and nurses to push drugs on potential customers, while routinely capping the gratuity at 10%. Even a waiter in a restaurant is guaranteed 18% when serving a large group and they do not have to drive the food to the customers. Its all about the profit rather than the social responsibiity.

Mustard Seed

Everything is a scam in this country. Healthcare, taxes, insurance, education, banking, politics…the list is endless. Wanted the whole mess to collapse, but it won’t. Just the middle class and the bottom half of the well to do. What gets me is so many people are happy about it. They think it is going to be some kind of utopia! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Karen

My daughter while at H & R Block to have her taxes done was told by a tax preparer that they received new forms for 2014 which are for health insurance he asked her if she had health insurance a warning because next year you will be fined by the size of your household unless you have insurance. And a good friend of hers saw on tv that you will be penalized also if you are obese and any other health problem they deem. Also if you smoke a 60 year old will be penalized 5,454 per year this goes by your age.

sharonsj

The biggest economic problem we have is the cost of health care. Nearly every business has found ways around having to pay for their employees’ health insurance, so a lot of the cost has been passed on to the average citizen.

About two-thirds of all bankruptcies involve medical bills–and most of those people had health insurance! Instead of Obamacare (which is nothing but expanding private insurance) we need a national health care system like Canada or even Cuba. (And please spare me the nonsense of calling it socialism.)

We all have medical horror stories to tell, by the way. And as long as the drug companies and the AMA control things, it’s not going to get better.

El Pollo de Oro

SharonSJ: The conversation Americans SHOULD have had in 2009 and 2010 was an in-depth discussion on the health care systems of other countries. We should have gone country by country and taken a close look at what they are doing in those countries. Instead, our Democraps and Republi-Cons got into a shouting match over how best to serve their corporate masters at Blue Cross, Aetna, etc. As Chris Hedges and Gerald Celente have often said, Obamacare was nothing but a giant gift for the insurance companies.

Eric

The majority of Americans demand it. It seems sad the article condems the symptom rather than the cause.

El Pollo de Oro

“Obamacare is essentially forcing us to buy a defective corporate product. ”—Chris Hedges

“I share the right wing’s critique of Obamacare. It’s a disastrous bill. It was written by corporate lobbyists.”—Chris Hedges

“You need some health insurance? We’re going to privatize it. We’re going to make you buy from our
pals that sell insurance. That’s what they call Obamacare.”—Gerald Celente

For a long time, life expectancy continued to
increase in the United States. But that was before the former USA turned into a fascist Third World pig sty known as The Banana Republic of America. In the BRA, the health care system is so horribly broken that life expectancy rates are now decreasing except for the ultra-rich. As the BRA continues to slide deeper and deeper into the Third World abyss and more and more formerly middle class Americans become the neo-poor, most Americans won’t have access to decent health care. And Americans need health care badly because, God knows, there is a long list of things that will shorten your life in this Third World hellhole: terrible working conditions, Monsanto and their genetically modified poison, obesity, bad processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, lack of public
transportation in most places (which means less walking, less exercise), big pharma, violent crime, an ever-abusive police state. Americans are an unhealthy bunch—a fat, stressed out, f****ed
over, indoctrinated, downwardly mobile bunch. And you realize how indoctrinated the plantation slaves are when an obese diabetic gets a foot or leg amputation (which could have been prevented) yet babbles on about how we have the greatest
health care system in the world. But in the BRA, the health of a diabetic or a cancer patient takes a
back seat to corporate profits. Welcome to fascism, the merger of state and corporate power. And as Gerald Celente points out, the Unaffordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare, Romneycare or HeritageFoundationcare, or Pelosicare) is nothing but a giant bailout for corporations.

When all is said and done, the life expectancy for most Americans will likely fall to about 50 or 55. Only the ultra-rich will make it to 70 or 80.

God help you if you get sick in the rotting,
decaying, festering, collapsing Banana Republic of America, land of the corrupt and home of the desperate.

El Pollo de Oro

And I should add that even if you can afford the most expensive health insurance plans, the BRA’s broken health care system still poses a threat to your well being. That’s because if the poor have communicable diseases and don’t get the treatment they need, they can spread those diseases around.

So, a corporate asshole might be thinking, “What do I care if the poor have diabetes, heart disease or cancer? Not my problem. I won’t get diabetes or cancer by shaking hands with a poor person.” True, but the poor also get communicable diseases that they CAN spread around. And in the future, the vast majority of Americans are going to be poor.

Concerned momma

Yes it’s a scam. When we are advised to trust some one taught to treat symptoms and not cure instead of our own common sense something is wrong. We have become an ignorant nation. Someone has to stand up an say it like Sweeny Todd said, “This is piss…. Piss with ink!” Think people. Great article.

2Gary2

Every country ahead of us in life expectancy, all 17 of them, have
national health programs… and most have socialized medicine. Health care is a human right and has no place should it rely on the free (unfree) market.

reg

You’re so right. Americans are in big trouble.

GUEST

TOTALLY AGREE 100% WAKE UP AMERICA! EVEN IF YOU HAVE INSURANCE IT DOES NOT PROTECT YOU FROM BANKRUPTCY! THIS CURRENT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS EVIL AND IS FLEECING OUR AMERICAN CITIZENS! SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! ITS NOT JUST THE POOR THAT NEED HELP THE MIDDLE CLASS IS STRUGGLING TERRIBLY! WAKE UP! AMERICA’S CITIZENS ARE BEING BANKRUPTED!!!!! TOTALLY UNNACCEPTABLE AND SHAMEFUL! !!!!!

Hobomatt

I used to WORK for the industry (a Catholic hospital) until one of their surgeons botched a gall bladder removal. Their caring response? They FIRED me and took away my health insurance!! All legal in Colorado. They ARE part of a real racket!

DiscouragedOne

I work with people from other countries, they go back home to get surgeries, dental work, etc.

Cholesterol is bad – avoid it. Western civilization has an Alzheimer’s epidemic. Brain is like 95% cholesterol. Can you connect the dots (there’s only two).

http://profiles.google.com/american2018 American Sentry

I wonder if electric shock would do to flesh-eating bacterial toxin, what it does to snake and spider bite toxin, i.e. curdle it and render it impotent.

http://www.facebook.com/rainie.flores.7 Rainie Flores

These are 50 scary signs. They should definitely be doing something to provide better quality of service.

OneDay

Michael, I’ve been reading your articles for a long time but was finally moved to comment. This has been my favorite article out of all of yours I have read. I work in the healthcare industry and can say it is horribly broken. Thanks for the article. Keep up the good work.

Saurabh

I had an ear infection and i went to see a doctor…the doctor fee was $325 and the ear drop costed $200. It is ridiculous. The same ear drop in India just costs $1 and i might have paid $5-10 for seeing the specialist.

They are just looting all people here.

NPdoubtitwillwork

Excellent article, from someone inside the system. Believe me, no one is getting rich if medicare and medicaid are their primary payer source, as they are for me. I am a nurse practitioner working in long-term care. The reimbursement gets cut yearly, yet I am expected to do more with less. The patients coming from the hospitals are sicker and the drugs that would help are too expensive. Moral of the story is don’t get old in America.

http://www.facebook.com/RipLong Francis Elliott Long

MD ANDERSON HOSPITAL in Houston is NOT a privately owned hospital. You pay your taxes for them to be that way, and the University of Texas is a co-conspirator. Feeling better yet ?

http://www.facebook.com/RipLong Francis Elliott Long

I don’t hate Physicians, I Hate our Healthcare Business.

http://www.facebook.com/RipLong Francis Elliott Long

You are treated per an algorithm. It is the fixed, step by step basis for all care. It denies the heart of medicine, which is the “art,” but indemnifies practitioners and their employers from law suits, which is the whole point. It is based on the law of averages in which approximately 50 % of patients have the desired response. Feel better yet ?
.

http://twitter.com/JaackSchitt JackSchitt

‘we’ live in a profit based society. ‘we’ are experiencing the end result.

major

Its been clear, if your paying attention, that health care started to shift back in the 90’s with Clinton. The peddling of unsafe drugs on TV and other media is all about treating alleged chronic diseases and rarely about cures. The Health care industry stands to make much more money if they can treat a disease than actually cure it. This is where a previously private industry becomes a quasi governmental industry to prey on the citizens of its own community. This is socially a wholly destructive relationship. The masterminds of this scheme need to be in prison for life if not executed.

lily23

I would add to that list of what to do to consider alternative healthcare providers if you are sick but it isn’t a medical emergency. Naturopathic Doctors are only licensed in 16 states currently but receive the same education as MDs, and in addition learn about nutrition and ways to heal the body in a more whole, healthy way. In unlicensed states, there are still naturopaths who are practicing, they just have to practice under the guise of a “health consultant” or some other such title and their scope of practice is limited depending on the state. However, they still have the same education, and are able to fly under the bureaucratic radar which means they will actually be able to help you heal without having to answer to insurance, diagnosis requirements, etc. Many do a sliding scale as well!

Mike Smith

and women brag because they have married a Doctor. What a sell out! shame on you!!!!!

Ellse

Yes…to everything except the gloomy outcome. There is a superior form of medicine that’s been around for over 200 years, and the neat thing is that no one can do it efficiently for you except yourself – so medical exploitation will be ended when the people learn how to do homeopathy. The MD’s spread it around that homeopathy is placebo [not so]. And practicioners, even very good ones, don’t have a very good record because they choose the correct remedy less than 20% of the time. If you do it yourself, you can get close to 100% because you know yourself, can dig out the “strange/rare/peculiar symptoms”, and you care about yourself enough to work 24/7, if necessary, to be free and cured! I was knocking out from aromatic chemicals and spine swollen, etc. Guess what remedy I came to? Petroleum! Spine is pretty normal now. To do it yourself, you don’t need to invest in a program, but do it if you can afford it. I also purchased a “phamacy” of 400 remedies in various potencies – 6C is most important; I always start with 6C to test sensitivity to the remedy, and you wanta get everything you can out of the lowest potencies. Recently, for the first time, I ran into another environmental person who also found homeopathy helped; there are a growing number of converts. Another thing is allopaths get to a point where they can’t help you anymore, the drugs stop working, or they don’t control the pain – that’s why hospice got started. But hospice dopes you with morphine, and who wants to meet St. Peter bombed? With homeopathy you never run out of options even if you are terminal. Best of all, it gives quality life.
Thanks for the good compilation of med facts.

Carmi Hazen

A MEDICAL SYSTEM INCENTIVISED BY PROFIT IS INHERENTLY EVIL. All disease has a common denominator which is inadequate drainage. To remain healthy the circulatory system must run unimpeded. when blood and lymph flow become congested, the disease process begins and often becomes cancer.

We do not “catch” diseases, we create them. Germs are produced within the body itself as Nature’s scavengers. It is their toxic excretions that poison the blood and produces the symptoms of disease. By correcting the diet and maintaining a clean digestive tract, 90% of all disease can be avoided. We have almost total control over our health. Our ancestry has little to do with it. Don’t be fooled in thinking you have a “genetic” condition of which you have no control. There are only a handful of such diseases, the others are of our own making. Carmi Hazen

Jo Hughsie

I feel bad because I was commenting on a blog somewhere & one woman was saying (while kissing & praising 0bama) that finally now she is not being discriminated against because of her existing condition. I feel bad for her & anyone else that actually fell for the garbage 0bama has been spewing for about (at least) 6 years now.

JefferyHaas

For the past five years I have been predicting that the health care system will be the next big group that propositions Congress for a taxpayer bailout.
TOO BIG TO FAIL is something started by the banks but I guarantee you the banks had a large audience in corporate America, and corporate America learned that the American people can be forced to fork over any time for any reason, and Congress will force Americans to do it whether they like it or not, because corporate America now has way more power than the government.

That’s intentional.
THAT’S FASCISM.

Alecia Davis

As a healthcare employee, in the coding and billing department, I must agree that healthcare costs are out of control. However, there is more than one simple explanation for that, and your garbage listed, is just that, garbage. I only actually checked 3 of them, and all were false, or at a minimum, extremely distorted. “Obamcare” is NOT to blame for the extreme cost in healthcare today, and once fully implemented, and enforced would reduce the costs dramatically, but it is obvious that the purpose of this article is to convince ignorant, narrow and feeble minded people of just the opposite. Of course they are unwilling, or just incapable of actually researching your garbage to confirm that your full of crap, and that is why, they accept this trash as the gospel. Shameful really, that the problem is so fixable, yet, society would rather blame the President. Anyone blaming Bush for Medicare Part D? You wanna talk ridiculous healthcare rape……check that out~

Arizona

CONTRARY to what everyone believes,Obamacare IS NOT ABOUT MONEY,its all about having a tracker chip PUT IN EVERY AMERICAN,the mark of the beast…..TO COMPLETELY ENSLAVE YOU……FOREVER……………

KellyM.Zoo

Good advice, Dr. Dotson! I would add one more thing- get right with God, the One who created you, and ask HIM for advice, for healing, for supply of all your needs. He owns everything and is very generous when you ask Him!

american

The mafia has more heart than a hospital charging those rates. And apparently all hospitals are ganged up against the people. And insurance companies are ganging up with them to financially rape everyone. Nobody gets a raise anymore, they just get to keep their health insurance with only an increase in premium.

Pokewoman

The health care industry and food industry are in bed together. Once we are sufficiently poisoned by the chemical laden food, trust that there will be a drug to cure the disease that eating that food has created. Unlike herbal supplements, most pharmaceutical drugs are designed for you to keep taking them indefinitely. Often more drugs are added to counteract the problems that the initial meds created. Your best bet is to take charge of your own health. Get educated and listen to what your body is trying to tell you about what you put into your mouth.

Jig mesh

Yes it is the largest. Ponzi scheme in the world,costliest medical treatment in world which is all set for the profit of elites

E. Rommel

Given point #35, maybe point #20 is a good thing!

Real ville

Question about #3 and America spending more on healthcare than a bunch of countries combined: do those combined countries avail themselves of similar services in similar quantities, just pay much less for it (quite believable) or perhaps don’t require/choose to use much healthcare (also believable) or perhaps they have less chronic conditions requiring extortionately expensive pharmaceuticals? I’d be curious to understand as that type of detail helps understand where the ones in the bucket of us healthcare are more accurately.
Perhaps it’s due to our system (and drugs of choice) being geared towards “management” of symptoms vs. perhaps those other countries desiring to cure their patients, thus negating the need for long term management in most cases.

I wonder what my premiums will rise to. I have high deductible family coverage that runs about $3k a year. I choose this over my employer full coverage plan that cost me $500/mo. for just my copay, and got my employer (me) to pay me the $500 contribution instead. $6000 deductible per year max (my risk) was worth it as we are young, healthy and actually choose to take responsibility for our health. Ironically an office visit only costs twice what our former copay was. So, what was I getting for that $10k/yr. insurance cost exactly? We paid for the birth of our last child and we are still ahead financially. Want to see healthcare costs go down dramatically? Stop paying for insurance, and go out of,pocket. Bet you suddenly care how much it costs.